For anyone who learns and works with Kubernetes, its CLI kubectl becomes one of the essential tools to know as to interact with the cluster. Kubectl is a command-line tool that is used to communicate with the Kubernetes control plane via a Kubernetes API.

As Kubernetes API is an HTTP REST API, so every operation in Kubernetes is done as an API endpoint and can be executed through an HTTP request to this API endpoint. The main task of kubectl is to carry forward the HTTP requests to the API endpoints.

Thus, kubectl becomes the most important thing to know for Kubernetes. And in this hands-on lab, we will be going through the handiest and most useful kubectl commands to improve the productivity of each and everyone who is using Kubernetes.

We would also like to thank each and every Twitter user who inspired us to convert this tweet into the hands-on lab and gave some wonderful kubectl tips.

Lab Setup

You can start the lab setup by clicking on the Lab Setup button on the right side of the screen. Please note that there are app-specific URLs exposed specifically for the hands-on lab purpose.

Our lab has been set up with all necessary tools like base OS (Ubuntu), developer tools like Git, Vim, wget, and others. 

Lab with Kubectl

As we triggered the lab through the LAB SETUP button, a terminal, and an IDE comes for us which already have a Kubernetes cluster running in them.

Cluster Details

• Check about the cluster nodes status and get some of its information

kubectl get nodes -o wide

kubectl cluster-info

Also alias k='kubectl' is already setup, so you can use k also instead of kubectl on the terminal

• On moving forward, let's understand all the supported resources 

kubectl api-resources

Get all the api-resources name of a particular namespace with supported (list) verbs and kind

kubectl api-resources --verbs=list --namespaced -o name | xargs -n 1 kubectl get --show-kind --ignore-not-found -n kube-system

• To know about the permissions for a given service account for a target namespace

kubectl get ns,sa

kubectl auth can-i --list

kubectl -n kube-system auth can-i --list --as system:serviceaccount:kube-system:default

Working with Pods

• To understand any Kubernetes objects, like for example pods 

kubectl explain pods

• Now, let's create an Nginx pod in the default namespace and explore more on kubectl via this pod.

kubectl apply -f nginx-pod.yaml

Know the status of the Nginx pod 

kubectl get pods -o wide

Keep a watch on the pod 

kubectl get pods --watch

Get the details of all the pods along with containers running in the cluster in a JSON format 

kubectl get pods --all-namespaces -o jsonpath='{range .items[*]}{.metadata.namespace}{"/"}{.metadata.name} {.spec.containers[*].image} {.spec.initContainers[*].image} {.spec.ephemeralcontainers[*].image} {"\n"}{end}'

• Interact with running pods by checking its logs and starting an interactive shell

Check the logs of the pod

kubectl logs nginx-pod

kubectl logs -f nginx-pod

check the logs of the existing pods through labels

kubectl logs -l app=nginx

Interact with the nginx pod through kubectl exec

kubectl exec nginx-pod -- ls /

kubectl exec -it nginx-pod -- bin/sh

• Next, we will be installing Metrics API to know the resource utilization of pods and nodes through the kubectl top command.

kubectl apply -f components.yaml

Check the metrics-server pod in the kube-system namespace and wait till it comes in Running state.

kubectl get pods -n kube-system

Check metrics for nodes

kubectl top nodes

Check metrics for pods in default namespace

kubectl top pod --namespace default

Check metrics for all the pods of the cluster sorted by memory.

kubectl top pods --all-namespaces --sort-by='memory'

• We can also copy files from a running pod to the host and vice-versa

kubectl cp nginx-pod:/usr/share/nginx/html/index.html ./index.html

you will find that index.html is present in the root directory.

• Now, delete the Nginx pod without any delay

kubectl delete pod nginx-pod --now

Working with Deployments

• Now, let's create a deployment to explore deployment with kubectl

kubectl apply -f nginx-deploy.yaml

kubectl get pods --selector=app=nginx

To get all the deployments of the cluster in a JSON format

kubectl get deployments -n default -o=json

• You can also create your own commands with kubectl by using raw outputs

kubectl get --raw=/apis/apps/v1/deployments

To scan all the deployments in the cluster to identify the deployments with failing replicas using raw API, you can also use the below command 

Let's check the metrics also using raw API

kubectl get --raw /metrics | less

• We can also rollout the existing deployment app to a new version by changing its image version and checking its status
  

kubectl set image deployment/nginx-deploy nginx=nginx:stable

kubectl rollout status deployment nginx-deploy

• To check the status of the pod with labels and kubectl wait and some conditions 

kubectl wait --for=condition=ready pod -l app=nginx

• Now, let's create a new deployment and store it in a YAML file 

kubectl create deployment new-deploy --image=nginx --dry-run=client -o yaml > quick_deploy.yaml

Check quick_deploy.yaml in the root directory. 

ls

• We can also get all the events of the cluster

kubectl get events --sort-by=".lastTimestamp"

We can also use kubectl patch command to on existing resource to update any particular field

kubectl patch deploy/nginx-deploy --type merge --patch '{"metadata":{"annotations":{"poke":"yes"}}}'

Verify this by using kubectl describe command

kubectl describe deploy nginx-deploy

If you don't want to use the patch command to annotate the object, then you can use kubectl annotate 

kubectl annotate deploy nginx-deploy foo='bar' 

• Do port-forwarding of the existing deployment from 30000 local port to 80 pod port

kubectl port-forward deploy/nginx-deploy 30000:80

check with curl on 127.0.0.1:30000

curl 127.0.0.1:30000

• Now, delete the nginx-deploy deployment with grace-period=0

kubectl delete deployment nginx-deploy --grace-period=0

Creating a Secret

• We can also create a secret from a file

kubectl create secret generic db-user-pass \
  --from-file=admin=./admin.txt \
  --from-file=password=./password.txt

kubectl get secrets

kubectl get secret db-user-pass -o yaml

To work with different kubectl plugins via krew, you can refer to another hands-on lab of ours for this. Also, to know more about how Autoscaling works in Kubernetes, you can refer to this hands-on lab.

References

• Twitter thread for Kubectl Tips

Conclusion

In this hands-on lab, we saw many wonderful and useful Kubectl commands to work and use in our daily life.